How to Help Your Young Adult Take Charge of Their Education (DF#172)

Hannah Maruyama [00:00:00]:
Picking trade school because your young adult's view is limited is always the wrong way to pick. It doesn't matter why you're picking that way. Some of your kids should be software developers. Some of your kids should be in car sales. Some of them should be merchant marines. Some of them should be package designers. Some of them should be doing anything, but being an electrician school.

Ryan Maruyama [00:00:23]:
Aloha folks and welcome back to degree free. We are super excited to have you back. I'm Ryan. She's Hannah. We are doing something a little bit different. We are experimenting with shorter episodes, a little bit more action packed. So without further ado, let's get into it. If you guys liked this shorter episode, let us know in the comments, YouTube, Spotify, you know what to do or in the Apple Podcasts reviews.

Hannah Maruyama [00:00:48]:
Give a review that says Hannah was right, because I have been campaigning for these shorter format episodes for a while. And we'll see what people think.

Ryan Maruyama [00:00:55]:
Like I said before, 5 stars and I read it no honest reviews. 5 stars only speaking of 5 star reviews though, let's just start off with this 5 star review that we got an apple podcast. This is from S Mainer. The title is essential content for parents of teens. Thank you. Someone needed to say this. I first heard Hannah on the 1000 hours outside podcast and have been following ever since I was born in 81 and college was considered mandatory by the time I graduated. However, I knew I would probably never work in my field of study.

Ryan Maruyama [00:01:27]:
Thankfully, I did not take on debt to secure that fancy paper, but it is hard to stand against the tide of prevailing attitudes towards them. I have 8 kids and my oldest is 19. Your content could not have come at a better time. Thanks for empowering us to say yes to ongoing education and being truly free.

Hannah Maruyama [00:01:48]:
Thank you, S Maynard. I appreciate this specifically because you talked about coming from the 1000 Hours Outside podcast. Mainly, I want to thank you for understanding that our messaging is to empower people to take back control of their educational design, because it's very clear you understood that message. And I'm so excited to see you taking that to heart with all 8 of your kids. That's the coolest.

Ryan Maruyama [00:02:11]:
Yeah. That's one of the things that I kind of get irritated, I guess, is the best way to say it the most. When people say that we are anti education or that we want people to remain stupid because we don't want people to go into crushing student loan debt to get a piece of paper that they don't need. That makes us anti education. No, I'm actually all for education. I am all for learning new things constantly. I am all for continuing to learn and educate yourself on whatever it is that you want to educate yourself in. Particularly on the degree free podcast.

Ryan Maruyama [00:02:45]:
We talk about things that have to do with your job. That's what we talk about, but really it could be anything. Even your hobbies, you can learn more about that. Crochet, fishing, hiking, learn more and continue to learn. All we're saying is you should be a little bit more directed in your learning, identifying your goals, making a plan to go after your goals and then executing that plan and then reaching your goals. And then do that process again, when you've reached your goal.

Hannah Maruyama [00:03:09]:
I agree with you. There is probably nothing that yanks my chain as much as the, this is anti intellectualism, which has no meaning. And then this is anti education, which is just fundamentally ridiculous because education by its very nature is not something that could be pay walled by anyone. The idea that if you don't make a purchase from a US institution with poor incentive structure, that you are against education, and you can't even question the system that puts young people into that sort of student debt for something that is neither education nor vocational training. And then if you do that, you were an enemy of education, which is so patently ridiculous. Because if you question the system, you are actually an advocate for education because it's accessible to everyone. And people who say that anyone who questions the system is anti education, want to keep it in a walled garden and make sure that anyone who cannot access that walled garden through debt is not allowed to be educated, which is just not a good society to live in. It's not one I'm interested in participating in.

Hannah Maruyama [00:04:05]:
And that's why we talk about how to take back control over learning and educational design.

Ryan Maruyama [00:04:10]:
Hey there. I hope that you're loving this episode of the degree free podcast. We spend a ton of time every week creating this content for you. So my only ask is you take a quick second to leave a review or thumbs up on whatever platform you're on. It's one of the best and easiest ways that you can support this podcast, and this simple action can help bring more people into the degree free community. At degree free, we wanna help as many people as we can thrive and succeed without needing a college degree. Your review will be a step in that direction. If you could do this small favor right now, pause this and leave a review.

Ryan Maruyama [00:04:41]:
It would truly mean the world to us. Thank you, and back to the show. This is a mini segue into what I wanted to talk about this week, which is we had a loved one visit us for a little while. He's 15. He's 1 year younger than the people that we work with in the launch program where the segue comes into play is I don't want to say criticizing, but I would say adding my thoughts about his current high school workload and how I thought that it was a waste of time to take certain classes given his goals. I don't want to get into that this week. Like I said, we're trying to keep these a little bit shorter and trying to make it more action. I am going to write my thoughts about exactly what I told him and why I felt that way in another episode, maybe next week, maybe the week after that, the college marketing, they have their grips so far into the high school system.

Ryan Maruyama [00:05:37]:
I've done a segment on this before, but there's a lot of new listeners. And so I'll just say it again. There are major college marketing tactics. Like they're the best marketers in the world. One of the ways that they get you to buy early is through dual enrollment or AP classes. Either, or people have dogged on me. Cause I said AP classes last time. It doesn't really matter.

Ryan Maruyama [00:05:58]:
You're doing the work to get college credit before you're actually enrolled in college. I mean, dual enrollment, you're actually enrolled in college, but AP courses is like a free sample. It's literally like the samples that they give out at Costco. You think those people are standing there on Saturday, Sunday, Thursday, whenever they're out there, because that doesn't make them money. No, no, no, no, no, no. They are out there giving you free stuff so that you buy more stuff. And those AP classes are making those little free credits. That's 3 credits that you take here.

Ryan Maruyama [00:06:29]:
You get a 5 on it, that dual enrollment that you take, and then you get the college credit. They're giving you free samples and you're going to go and purchase. If it's not a 100,000 up, let's say you've got 5 free classes. You are still going to spend however much of credit. Let's just say now it knocks off a quarter of the price of the entire thing. $75 you're going to spend. There are some people that say, okay, well, my child is graduating high school with an associate's degree. Okay.

Ryan Maruyama [00:06:53]:
Well, what about them? Should they continue on? You're going to still have to buy another $50 worth of a degree for a piece of paper that they may or may not need. And you have to figure out what their needs and wants are.

Hannah Maruyama [00:07:02]:
And then heaven forbid, they upsell them into a master's degree or a graduate degree, some other graduate or PhD program after that. What are they gonna do? So, basically, that Costco example is so good because you go to Costco, you get a 3¢ sample of orange chicken, and then that 3¢ sample of orange chicken costs you $30 because we live in an inflationary economy right now. So all the orange chicken at Costco costs 30. The olive oil is insane.

Ryan Maruyama [00:07:24]:
All of oil is crazy.

Hannah Maruyama [00:07:25]:
And then they separated them. Like, they think we wouldn't notice.

Ryan Maruyama [00:07:28]:
It was like $50 for olive oil. I remember standing there and we looked at the person next to us and then they're just like, woah. And then the next time we went to Costco, they had.

Hannah Maruyama [00:07:41]:
Separated them from the 2 pack. Yeah.

Ryan Maruyama [00:07:42]:
It used to be a 2 pack for $54 And then they went down to a 1 pack for like $28 They thought we would have noticed.

Hannah Maruyama [00:07:50]:
We did notice, but then we felt a little bit better. We bought 2 bottles, which is so dumb. So when you go to Costco, that 3¢ sample of orange chicken that they give you in the freezer section is actually going to cost you $30. That's a really good example of what AP classes are to college degrees. They're going to give you something that's worth $200, $199 And then you are going to spend $104,000 to $156,000 per the NCES. It's so smart. And then they've got these parents to buy into it by saying, oh, look, my kid's taking AP classes and being so proud of it. What they don't realize is that before they've noticed their child is on a slip and slide towards bankruptcy exempt student loan debt.

Hannah Maruyama [00:08:30]:
It's really brilliant the way that they've done it and just built it in to have this sort of prestige as well. But the prestige is worth nothing if it doesn't help your child be successful and success is getting what your child wants in life. Unforgivable student loan debt is the wrong vehicle for many people to get the things that they want in life. And that is the problem.

Ryan Maruyama [00:08:49]:
The greater, the effort to obtain something, the more likely you are to go ahead with that purchase. So for example, this 15 year old, 16 year old, 17 year old high schooler, they are busting their hump to study for their AP exams, to study for this AP class, to get this paper and to do this exam, they're busting their hump and they do that every single year. They go to summer school, they take AP classes in summer school. They're taking extra classes that are AP classes. The more that they do that, the more likely they are to purchase. They've already made the purchase decision 3 years in, and now a lot of high schools, you can take AP classes, like as soon as. Year. You're making that purchase decision 4 years before you decide on which college you're going to because you don't even know which college you're going to.

Ryan Maruyama [00:09:36]:
And to the system at large, they don't care. They just want you to go.

Hannah Maruyama [00:09:39]:
Just buy.

Ryan Maruyama [00:09:39]:
Exactly. And the government just wants you to go because you're gonna sign those unforgivable student loans.

Hannah Maruyama [00:09:43]:
And then they can hound you till the end of the earth.

Ryan Maruyama [00:09:44]:
Earth. Anyway, like I said, I wasn't going to get into that because I'm going to get much more into it later. We had a 15 year old come and visit us. We love him. We won't even want what's best for him. He wanted to kind of work through some of his goals and figure out is he doing the right thing? Is he going about it the best way? That's kind of what he wanted, but that's also kind of not what he wanted as well. Cause he didn't really want to hear what we had to say at the end of the day.

Hannah Maruyama [00:10:13]:
Which is why you really can't talk. The process is ineffective when you're talking at them.

Ryan Maruyama [00:10:17]:
And anyway, this is good because I have talked at him his whole life.

Hannah Maruyama [00:10:21]:
You have slash do.

Ryan Maruyama [00:10:22]:
I love him to death.

Hannah Maruyama [00:10:23]:
That is your only speed with him.

Ryan Maruyama [00:10:25]:
Yeah. And it's only because I love him. Even though we both do this, you took the wheel on trying to figure out what his goals were, which is pretty much the first thing that we do in the launch program. It's in the very first session. There's 4 sessions total. In the first session. We just trying to figure out what are your goals and we ended up going through it and you ended up going through it. And I sat there just listening and it was a very, very enlightening thing for me because every time that he was responding, I wanted to just jump in.

Ryan Maruyama [00:10:56]:
He's 15. He is almost a man, but not quite yet. He knows a lot of things, but there's a bunch of stuff that he has no idea. And once again, he's a little young for the people we work with. Like he's literally a year too young, which is in a year. A lot of these ideas are a little bit more informed and we just know this from literally testing. We've done this with 15 year olds and down and then up as well, which is why we have the 16 to 20 year old range that we work with. But it was so difficult for me just being a bystander in the room with a person that I care about deeply, just saying these things.

Ryan Maruyama [00:11:31]:
Cause I just wanted to jump in and when he struggled, I wanted to clarify. Or when he said something that I'm like, that's not really what you want, dude. So for example, some of the questions that we might ask are where do you want to live? What do you want your life to look like? That's actually a question that we ask very broad, but paint us a word picture.

Hannah Maruyama [00:11:46]:
And then don't give any guidance. The key part of the process is shut up, which is really hard to do. But when you're agnostic about it, when you are just there to listen, it helps a lot.

Ryan Maruyama [00:11:55]:
It's not hard to do when you're doing it. Very honestly, when you're getting paid to do it, it's not hard to do it all.

Hannah Maruyama [00:12:00]:
Because your job is to listen.

Ryan Maruyama [00:12:02]:
Exactly.

Hannah Maruyama [00:12:02]:
And not interrupt.

Ryan Maruyama [00:12:03]:
But when you love the person, you care about these answers. Cause you're like, is that really what you want? That's not what you said. Do you want last week? That, that, that, that, that you just want to jump in and try to save them almost, but you're not saving them at all. And this is exactly what we tell parents in the launch program. Parents have the opportunity to be on the calls if they really want to.

Hannah Maruyama [00:12:21]:
And sometimes under 18, they just stay in the room and listen, which is good. Cause then they have context.

Ryan Maruyama [00:12:26]:
I think most of the time it's not a great thing. You have access to the calls. You can go back and watch it for the context. But for the most part, it's better for the young adult to be free to

Hannah Maruyama [00:12:37]:
express themselves openly. Yeah. Their parents' approval has so much bearing on what they say. The definition of success is how close you get to getting the things that you want. And sometimes it's difficult if a young adult wants to be very transparent about like, oh, you know, this is what I want. It doesn't match up to whatever grand vision their parents have for what they want their child's life to look like. And those are 2 very different things. And young adults will be very unhappy as anyone would be unhappy if someone else's vision of the future that they don't feel in their heart is what they're pursuing.

Hannah Maruyama [00:13:08]:
It really helps for the young adults to just feel like they can be very honest about what it is that they want out of life and where they want to live. If they want to stay in the same hometown and their parents are like, no, I want you to move to a big city vice versa. Whatever the young adult wants is really what they should do, unless they have a feeling that matches their parents. In which case that would be okay.

Ryan Maruyama [00:13:26]:
What does this mean for you listening to this? 1, I mean, if you want to work with us, you can go to degreefree.coforce/launch, be part of the launch program there. And if you do sign up, we advise that the parents not be there. Do you have access to all the calls? So there's all that when you're having these conversations with your young adult, the power of just being silent, even though it's so hard is really strong. And then when you're going through these types of conversations, any type of conversation that has to do with their future, where they're going, what their life is gonna look like. Really the power of silence. It really can't be understated and just being there and listening. If you want guidance for these conversations and not to say that you need guidance for these conversations, but if you want people that have battle tested, been there, done that for their future and for these young adults future, you can get the degree free way, how to help your 16 to 20 year old build the life they want at degreefree.co/book. When you get it and you're working through the book, one of the reasons we gave 2 books was so that you have something to do while your young adult is going through it.

Ryan Maruyama [00:14:29]:
And you're not just sitting there looking over them like a hawk. You can go and you can read forward and be like, okay, this is what's coming down the pipeline. And then also for them, you're not sharing the same book and looking over them. And there's so much riding on their answers because we get into a lot of their goals, finances, so many things of what they want their future life to look like, where we tried our best to give you an aid to help you kind of just sit there and bleed into these pages of what they want their life to look like.

Hannah Maruyama [00:14:59]:
One of the funniest things we got with somebody who reviewed the book and said, this is basically just a conversation guide. And what's funny about that is the original title of the book was 6 conversations you need to have with your 16 to 20 year old. So, yes, that's exactly what it is.

Ryan Maruyama [00:15:12]:
It's a workbook conversation guide for you to help your young adult figure this stuff out. That was my thing. I was finally on the receiving end of it because we've had so many conversations with parents like, well, I can be in the calls.

Hannah Maruyama [00:15:26]:
We always tell them parents are always welcome because they are.

Ryan Maruyama [00:15:28]:
Of course, if you come in interview and you get me and we're talking, I'm going to tell you, you're welcome. I think the calls go better with the young adults by themselves.

Hannah Maruyama [00:15:36]:
What a lot of parents say is that the process that they go through in the launch program is them sort of handing the reins over to them. So it is them starting to take some sort of agency over their decisions and over what they're going to do. Okay. I I want to talk about something and everyone's going to be mad at me after this one. I have a problem with the giant trade school resurgence. I'm about to show you a clip that Ryan and I got sent 87,000 times across all of our social media platforms. So actually thank you for all of you who did that. We have seen this clip so many times and roll it.

Speaker C [00:16:06]:
There is a report of a blue collar boom. The tool belt generation is what Gen z is being referred to.

Hannah Maruyama [00:16:14]:
Okay. So they are calling Gen Z the tool belt generation. And while I think that this is valid due to the amount of them that are now going back into the trades, my own sister who is Gen Z is a structural welder. So that one lines up correctly. However, my concern about this is that many people are not going through the process that my youngest sister did in order to find out what's going to work for the life they want. And not only that, but my sister did not go to trade school. She got paid on the job training apprenticeship, which is completely different. And that is the only thing that really completely negates the risk of paying.

Hannah Maruyama [00:16:55]:
Now here's the thing. I have 3 reasons that the tool belt generation trend is not actually a good thing and how parents can help make sure their children are actually picking the right fit for their career path. And you'll see people going on all the podcast circuits now just saying, Yeah, you can make more as a plumber. You can make more as a tradesperson, which is not invalid. However, there's a huge piece of this that I'm really concerned about. The main reason I believe that this is happening is because high schools are college pipelines. They are unable to funnel people anywhere except for colleges, the military, and now they have one more option. They have trade schools, which are still colleges, which still oftentimes have similar failure rates and bad ROI.

Hannah Maruyama [00:17:38]:
While you are going to have a more solid career trajectory and a more solid skill set than whatever nebulous things they're teaching at a liberal arts college, it's still a college and it's still the government trying to use the system they have built to funnel people into, again, still bankruptcy exempt debt. And it's actually infuriating to me to watch people get so close to the answer and then miss it completely. Because it's just literally every entrepreneur talking head. Everyone is just running their mouth. The one person who I've noticed is actually backing off from this a little bit interestingly is Mike Rowe. I've noticed Mike Rowe has tempered the trade thing a lot because he realizes that they can do anything and that's good.

Ryan Maruyama [00:18:16]:
That's because he's watching the degree free podcast.

Hannah Maruyama [00:18:18]:
I know Mike Rowe is watching the degree free podcast because he gets sent it all the time.

Ryan Maruyama [00:18:21]:
Hi, Mike. Hey

Hannah Maruyama [00:18:22]:
Mike. Let us know when you want to talk. Anyway, it's crazy to watch this because it's slowly getting, pulling into the mainstream later in that same exact podcast episode that we were sent. Jason Kalkanis talks about him learning more actually in his training after he graduated from college than he'd learned in his entire college experience. And Chamath agrees, and then just says, he's actually getting close to the point. Chamath is actually getting really close to the point where he says, we have convinced people that they can buy access to success and different social classes in college and they cannot. And that is really the core problem.

Ryan Maruyama [00:18:52]:
Just to jump in for a second. We actually got a comment on our YouTube not too long ago. That was literally this. We haven't talked about this yet at all, but the comment said I went to trade school. I graduated a year ago to be a welder and bro, I'm still not a welder.

Hannah Maruyama [00:19:09]:
I want to be super clear about this too. My youngest sister is a structural welder. She out earns the median master's degree holder. She does very well. She has a hard skill set. She learned it in a paid apprenticeship. She did not get funneled into trade school with no concept of what sort of work was going to fit for the type of life she lived. She had a clear vision of what she wanted of how she was going to use that skillset and roll it into the things that she actually wants, which she wants to have land.

Hannah Maruyama [00:19:38]:
She wants to have a family.

Ryan Maruyama [00:19:39]:
That said, I know this because that was me and my source. I went to college and I knew all those things. I just was lied to about what I would get at the end. And I'm not saying, like, I was a victim or anything like that. I'm trying to illustrate a point here, which is, like, all the information it pointed me towards college. All of the information online, all of the information from my guidance counselor, from my family, from my friends, from those that went before me for a lot of these people, it's not like they didn't think about those things. They did think about those things. They just arrived at the wrong conclusion.

Ryan Maruyama [00:20:10]:
So it makes me think about that mark Twain quote. It ain't what you don't know that hurts you. It's what you think, you know, that just ain't so for those people thinking trade school is the way that is much more dangerous.

Hannah Maruyama [00:20:22]:
Yeah, because it's the same thing. College was the way, but now in order to pivot and still capture some of the market that they're going to lose, because people not taking out loans, they're like, well, we can't get all these $104,000, $156,000 loans anymore, but at least we can get a $40,000 one. At least we can get a $50,000 one where we were going to get 0 because people were going to go out to the market and find apprenticeships or ask people to apprentice them or take entry level work to learn a skill. And the other thing is I'm going to get into the core three things that parents can help their kids to make sure this is actually the right fit if they're interested in that. But the core thing that I'm concerned about, and this is the problem I see when all these people going, Oh, go into the trades, go into the trades, go into the trades, is that they are like, you'll make more. And they do sometimes earn more than certain college graduates. And they do sometimes earn more than certain paper people. But the problem with that is that the real way to the money in the trades is business ownership.

Hannah Maruyama [00:21:14]:
That's where you really get to the money and they're not fixing this kid's problems, but there's some of the kids that like, you should buy your kid a power washer and teach them digital marketing. There's others of them who need to be told, no, go get a cybersecurity certification. And we're just pigeonholing all these kids into bankruptcy exempt trade school debt, which is still not better.

Ryan Maruyama [00:21:32]:
About the money though. I hear what you're saying and I agree with you, but I think that we should define what money is. If you're trying to have over $1,000,000 a year, you probably are looking towards business ownership.

Hannah Maruyama [00:21:43]:
I read somewhere you top out at about 2.50 for employees and at the 2.50 you're getting into C suite at the 200 mark, you're getting into C suite. You're getting into software developers who can get a little bit higher than that.

Ryan Maruyama [00:21:54]:
There are trades people that earn that amount of money. That's what I was just about to say, which is there are, and usually in the trades, this is just very, generally speaking, there's the amount of skill that is required to do the job. How skilled are you and how difficult is that skill to learn skill usually congruent with experience. So the more experience that you have, the more skilled you are. And if it is difficult, that is a barrier to entry for your trade. And then the more difficult, the higher the pay. Now, on the other hand, that's the left hand, the right hand is risk usually and not always, but the riskier jobs you get compensated for that risk. So if you have a risky job that requires a lot of skill, AKA experience a lot of time to learn that skill, then you can get paid.

Ryan Maruyama [00:22:45]:
Outsized what a normal person would get paid in the trades. But I agree with you of that $250,000 a year mark, because that's exactly what I was about to say. Just painting with a broad brush here. If your young adult's goal is to make over $250,000 a year, because that is the type of lifestyle that I would want to maintain, then they are looking at business ownership.

Hannah Maruyama [00:23:05]:
They need years in the trades. They need high leverage tech skills, or they need a business. Those are your options pretty much. The other concern I have is, you know, how we talk about their job limit inventory. And so these young adults don't know that many jobs. And the other problem is that now, instead of picking from a college menu with all these degrees, they're picking from a trade school menu, which is still extremely limited in a lot of ways. And that's the problem where a lot of them don't need to go to trade school. You need to find a stringed instrument repairer in your town to apprentice them to.

Hannah Maruyama [00:23:36]:
You need to send them to a tailoring school. Sommelier is a good example of something that is definitely a trade where you have specific education or rope technicians and specialists, which are the people who actually create the ropes that are used for like heavy machinery or ships and stuff like that. That's a job. That's definitely a trade, but the trade schools are going to miss that by a mile. They're going to put your kid into electrician work. They're gonna put your kid into plumbing. They're gonna put your kid into HVAC, all of which have money in them. If you go into business ownership or you spend years in them to get so specialized that your hourly wage is really high.

Hannah Maruyama [00:24:07]:
But my concern is that all of these kids, they're just going, we're not going to send them to a 4 year college. So we're just going to flip the tracks and just shovel them in here. So here are the three reasons. I think this whole tool belt generation thing is not good. One, people are sending their kids to trade school for the same reasons that they send them to college and that's because they don't know the other options. The second reason is schools are realizing that 4 year college or the military makes them look bad. And so now they're adding trade schools to the rotation. They have not fixed their vocational creativity problem.

Hannah Maruyama [00:24:36]:
And then 3, they are still pigeonholing people into colleges and student loan debt. Now they're just trade colleges with limited options and trade school, college debt.

Ryan Maruyama [00:24:46]:
I want to jump in here and talk about the limited options that you're talking about. I don't think that's the problem. The problem isn't that there's only electrician plumbing and HVAC. That's not the problem. The problem is that they're not getting jobs afterwards. There's plenty of work for electricians, plumbers, HVAC technicians. The problem is that in trade school, they learn how to quote, do the job, and then they don't actually go to do the job afterwards. I hear what you're saying about the limited job options and the limited vocational creativity.

Ryan Maruyama [00:25:16]:
That is definitely true. Trades is definitely more than those top 5 or 6 trades out there, but those top 5 or 6 trades, there's lots of work in them. And the trade schools is a pipeline to a job and it is not what's a pipeline to a job is a job.

Hannah Maruyama [00:25:35]:
Which is why when my sister went, she had a guaranteed job that paid her to train an apprentice. And then she just continued up in that job. She didn't go to a trade school and then hope she could get a job. She secured a job that paid her to learn.

Ryan Maruyama [00:25:50]:
Yeah. So I just wanted to clarify that point. I mean, it might be your opinion. That's the problem, but like the problem I think is that the trade schools just aren't good at getting the last step of it, which is the only reason why anybody goes to trade school is to get a job and they don't help you with that. They don't make you ready for that. They don't get you the experience necessary to get a job. That's the problem with it. It's not the limited vocations that they offer.

Hannah Maruyama [00:26:13]:
I actually don't disagree with that either. I think that there are a few that have

Ryan Maruyama [00:26:16]:
pipelines to local companies, but very few from what I've actually seen.

Hannah Maruyama [00:26:16]:
And I say that as to local companies, but very few from what I've actually seen. And I say

Ryan Maruyama [00:26:20]:
that as someone who it is

Hannah Maruyama [00:26:20]:
literally our job to look at all these different trade schools all over the country. And in all 50 states, I have been deep in trade school websites all over the country, neck deep in trade school websites, and there are very few options. So I say that because most people do not do the amount of research that we do on all these specific educational options. So we have a pretty good gauge of that. And then what I want to talk about now is the 3 ways that parents can help their young adults actually fix this problem and make sure if their kid is interested in trade school, that it's actually going to align with what they want. So the first thing is talk to your kids about the life that they want and where they want to live, what sort of income they want to have, what sort of schedule they want to have, and then what sort of work environment they want to be in. And then does a trade or a trade based business make sense for the life that they want? If so, full steam ahead. This is so important though, because parents are now just going, Oh, well, you want to go into a trade school.

Hannah Maruyama [00:27:14]:
Their level of panic about the amount of debt is going down. And then they're still not proofing this concept out, which is really concerning to me because what is going to happen is 2 years from now, when a bunch of these young adults realize that's not actually what they wanted to do, and the parents are panicking and the kids are unhappy because they wasted time and money. All of the big publications are going to go, turns out higher education was actually the best bet. Turns out all the tool belt generations going back to college turns out actually everybody needs to buy a sociology degree. That's literally what's going to happen. And they're going to act all smug when it wasn't because the trade schools were a bad option in general. It's because people did not think through whether or not what the trade schools were offering was applicable to help them get the type of work that they wanted to live the way they want. And that's really my concern.

Hannah Maruyama [00:28:02]:
So if it does align with what your child wants, please look for apprenticeships and on the job training first. Then if you cannot find that, or if a trade school is a more competitive financial option, which I can't imagine if your child's being paid to train, then you will get trade schools, then you'll look at grants, then you'll look at different programs. Then you look at certifications and then that's how you pick. It's not just, oh, not college. Okay. Just go to trade school. And then I won't panic. Cause I feel like you're doing something that makes me feel a little bit better about my decision, not to push you into a 4 year college.

Ryan Maruyama [00:28:35]:
So find an apprenticeship or on the job training. That's pathway number 2.

Hannah Maruyama [00:28:39]:
Yeah. Degree free pathway number 2.

Ryan Maruyama [00:28:40]:
A sub point in that is something that we call build your own apprenticeship for those people that live in a small town or for those people. You do a Google search, you and your young adult, and you do a search for plumbing apprenticeships, your town plumbing on the job training, your town. It nothing pops up. Don't fret. It's not the end of the world. The best thing that you could do at that point, if you're still want to go through with it and there's nobody offering any of those things, is that just be plumbing company in your town or wherever your young adult wants to be and just go through and knock on those doors. Every single one that comes up on Google maps within your serviceable area, don't call walk in. I mean, if they have an office, you walk into these places and you say, Hey, this is what I can do.

Ryan Maruyama [00:29:32]:
I know this about plumbing. I know that about plumbing. I know this plumbing. If you don't know anything about plumbing and you say, I don't know anything, but I can learn really quickly. I'm a hard worker. I'm always on time, whatever, whatever. And this is the salary that I require and have that salary be minimum wage.

Hannah Maruyama [00:29:45]:
Getting paid minimum wage is better than going into bankruptcy exempt debt. The fact that we even have to say that out loud is crazy.

Ryan Maruyama [00:29:50]:
Your finances are going the exact opposite way if you were going to trade school. And then at the same time, if a left hand is skill slash experience and the right hand is risk, then the left hand, you are going to be increasing the amount of skill really quickly because your experience is going to go through the roof. Whereas in the trade school, you're gonna have to sit in the class. This chapter is on capacitors.

Hannah Maruyama [00:30:12]:
And some trade schools require prerequisites too, which is such a giant waste of time.

Ryan Maruyama [00:30:16]:
Whereas if you just go get on the job training, you're going to cover that in the morning. You're going to cover that before lunch and then you're going to mess up and they're going to be like, dude, you almost killed us all. Don't do that.

Hannah Maruyama [00:30:26]:
I was talking to somebody who had a job that was in the energy field. I was able to ask this guy, Hey, you know, what'd you take, would you take 18 to 20 year olds? Would you be interested in doing that? And he said, yeah, as long as they're responsible, because they're not responsible. They can run the ATVs over somebody and kill us all. He literally said that. That's so funny.

Ryan Maruyama [00:30:43]:
I say that because that's my life. I literally said that because I learned on the job and I almost killed us all.

Hannah Maruyama [00:30:49]:
And then you almost got killed too. Somebody else drowned you. Oh man. So funny. And I really want to drive this home before we finish out picking trade school, because your young adults view is limited is always the wrong way to pick. It doesn't matter why you're picking that way. Some of your kids should be software developers. Some of your kids should be in car sales.

Hannah Maruyama [00:31:07]:
Some of them should be merchant Marines. Some of them should be package designers. Some of them should be doing anything, but being an electrician school, and they shouldn't just get pigeonholed into electrician school or HVAC or plumbing because there was a lack of vocational creativity. There was a lack of understanding of what was out there And because trade school just seemed a little bit safer than the financial exposure you're going to undertake from a 4 year college. It's still financial exposure. It's still bankruptcy exempt debt. You really need to think about what's right for them because otherwise they won't know what's right for them until later. They're going to be defeated.

Hannah Maruyama [00:31:39]:
They're going to waste time, money, and energy. This all could be avoided if you just talk to them now about what they actually need and want from their life. And then whether or not electrician school, plumbing school, or other trade schools actually fit that.

Ryan Maruyama [00:31:52]:
We're doing another mailbag episode soon. So if you want to ask us a question, ask.degreefree.co. I'm going to put on the screen right now, put in the show notes for everybody. Go there, ask us your questions. Let us know what you got there. We tried something different this week. Might not be that much shorter for you. It was a lot shorter for us.

Ryan Maruyama [00:32:08]:
If you're listening to this, please let us know how we did. What we're trying to do usually the way that we have this is that we have 7 things that we want to talk about and we feel we can't really get into any of them very deep at all. And so that's what we meant by like more action packed. We are trying to do deeper dives on things that are relevant to you and to us and things that we're going through right now. The format that we're trying right now is one point for Hannah. One point for me. And then maybe a sub point here and there. That is what we're trying.

Hannah Maruyama [00:32:40]:
Yeah. We're going to see if we can get better at this too.

Ryan Maruyama [00:32:42]:
For the next few episodes, let us know how we're doing. Comments, YouTube, Spotify. I think that's pretty much it until next time.